


Passacaglia

by Callie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, s04e08 Fugue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie/pseuds/Callie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not until they're well into their mission that Will tells Magnus it's his last one. (spoilers for 4.08, Fugue).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passacaglia

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Allie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/technosagery/pseuds/technosagery) for her advice and encouraging me to finish, and [Cerie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie) for reading along in-progress and helping with questions.
> 
> No sloths were harmed in the making of this fic.

It's not until they're well into their mission that Will tells Magnus it's his last one.

They're deep in the Costa Rican jungle, studying sloths. There's a sloth rescue center there, and they'd contacted the Sanctuary because they'd noticed that some of the sloths had been behaving differently than usual--more active, more social, sleeping less. Magnus believed there was a possibility that an abnormal sloth species thought to be extinct might be behind the change in behavior, so they packed up their gear and went. It was a quiet flight and a quiet drive. It wasn't that Will didn't have things to say, because he did. He just chose to keep them to himself for the time being because he didn't see how what he had to say would change things.

After they visit the sloth rescue for information, they set out on their own with the goal of looking for what Magnus believes is the extinct five-toed sloth. They set up their camp and supplies and for two days they're slogging through the jungle in the soggy heat. Will keeps quiet and does his job and Magnus doesn't press and does her job, but there's this tension between them that's thicker than the rainforest humidity and twice as cloying.

They've set up a lookout station, watching a group of sloths at a distance with binoculars. "I've had an offer from the FBI," Will says, staring through the binoculars because it's easier to do that than to look at her.

"I see," Magnus says. She's making notes in a small notebook, and pauses for a second in her writing before going on again. Her voice is quiet, and she doesn't seem surprised. "What will you do?"

"I'm going to take it." It's easier to say than he thought it would be, and he wonders if that's because he's making the right decision.

Magnus presses her mouth into a thin line, closes her notebook, and takes up the binoculars again. Will watches her for any sign of--honestly, he's not sure what he's watching for, only that he wants some kind of reaction. Her hands are steady, her mouth set, and he wonders if she's been expecting this. She doesn't seem surprised.

Somehow, that doesn't surprise him. He wonders if it has anything to do with her hundred-plus years on a mountaintop.

They stare at the sloths for a little while longer without speaking. Will's pretty sure these are just regular three-toed sloths and not the extinct kind, but he doesn't say anything about it. Finally, she puts down her binocaulars and turns to him. "I wish you the best, then, Will," she says quietly.

There's a lump in his throat and he just nods because he can't speak yet. "Thanks," he says, when he can finally get the word out. "It's been great, Magnus." Not all of it, especially lately, but more of it than not has been the biggest and best part of his life. He just can't do it anymore. He's tired of dying, tired of changing, tired of watching it happen to people he loves, and most of all he's tired of being a soldier. It's not who he is. Magnus needs someone who's willing to step into her shoes one day, and Will isn't the man for that. He's not sure why she always thought he was.

They don't talk about it anymore while they're in the lookout station. It's too awkward, and though Will has things to say he feels like he needs his feet on the ground to say them. He wonders, too, if Magnus wants to hear them, or if it's better to end it on this note, where it's a little frosty but he hasn't said anything he'll regret yet. So he doesn't say anything and neither does she and when it's too dark to see the sloths anymore, they head back to their small camp.

It's obvious, when they return to their camp, that someone (or some _thing_ ) has been there in their absence. Bags are overturned, containers rifled through in a way that doesn't suggest human interference, at least not to Will's eye. There's nothing methodical about the mess, nothing to suggest it's a person that's been going through their stuff (and no human tracks, either, Will notes as he crouches down to examine the ground around their tent with his flashlight), but it's not the wild disorder and damage he'd expect from wild animals looking for food. "What's missing?" he asks Magnus, and for the minute he's only thinking of the current problem and not what's happened before or what will happen when they get back.

"Our food stores," she says. "Not all of them, but enough that our work will be considerably impeded. Perhaps the culprit was frightened away by our arrival before it could finish the job."

"Shit."

"An accurate assessment, I'm afraid. We'll have to resupply tomorrow. It's far too late to make the trek back to the rescue center tonight."

"Okay." Will moves to start picking up their scattered supplies now that he's determined the pattern of scatter isn't going to tell them anything more about their thief, and he's straightened one small area when he hears a yelp from Magnus, followed by a thud and a splash. She's by the remains of the food supplies, pouring water from a canteen over her right arm and gritting her teeth in a way he knows means she's hurting way more than she'll ever let on. "Magnus?"

There's a patch on her arm that's red and beginning to blister even though it can't have been more than a few seconds since whatever happened, and when he tries to help her she waves him away. "More water," she says, because the canteen's getting low. He reaches for another canteen and when hers is spent, he doesn't hand her the fresh one but pours it himself and she doesn't argue except to say, "Don't touch it."

"Magnus, what happened?" He's no surgeon but he doesn't like the way her arm looks, and he doesn't like the way she's pale and sweating, either. Shock, probably, but from _what_? He helps her to the ground to sit before she passes out and she doesn't fight him.

She nods to the folding camp table beside them, where a small plastic bucket is overturned, and when he reaches for it, she smacks his arm away. "Don't touch it!" she snaps, but it's a warning sound, not an angry one. "There's a frog under there."

"A frog? You mean like those poison dart ones?" He hopes like hell not, because he read somewhere they have enough poison to kill ten adult humans and there is no way, _no fucking way_ he's losing Magnus because of a stupid frog.

"I thought so," she says, "but now I'm not so sure. Poison dart frogs secrete a batrachotoxin that acts on the nervous system to induce paralysis and cardiac arrest, and the symptoms I'm experiencing at the moment are inconsistent with that type of neurotoxin."

She's speaking in complete sentences and multisyllabic words so Will's reassured that for the immediate moment she's not going to die. But it's not much. "Does it hurt?" he says, which is a stupid question, but he has to ask it. Magnus just nods, and he figures if she's admitting to pain at all, it must be pretty bad. Will empties the rest of the canteen over her arm and then has a good look; her skin is a bright, angry blistered red, like a brutal sunburn, and though he didn't get a good look at it at first, he's pretty sure the red is spreading outward from the initial point of contact.

"I need the medical kit," she says, and when Will fetches it and brings it back she starts rummaging around in it left-handed.

Will pushes her hand away. He's not mean about it, but he's not going to let her do that thing she does where she just does whatever the hell she wants and doesn't let him get a word in. "Tell me what you need, Magnus, and I'll do it," he says.

She reaches for the kit again, but she's clumsy and slow. "I can bandage my own arm."

"Damn it, Magnus, give me that," he says, and yanks the sterile packet from the kit and rips it open. "Will you just be still and let me help you?"

"I've dealt with a great deal worse before you came along and I'm sure I'll deal with worse after you're gone, Will," she says, and tries to take the bandage from him. He thinks if she's going to be that stubborn he'll just let her, so he gives it to her and lets her do it herself.

 _After you're gone._ That hurts a lot more than he expected it to, even though he's the one that made the decision to leave.

While she's bandaging her arm, he looks in the medical kit for a painkiller. She won't want morphine, he knows, because no matter how badly it hurts she'll want to keep a clear head, so he looks for the ibuprofen instead.

"No morphine," she says, when she realizes what he's doing, and as she says it he's holding out three ibuprofen in one hand and a fresh canteen in the other. She looks from the pills to him--it's a look of recognition of how much he knows her that he knows her well enough to know what she wants before she asks--and then takes the pills. "Thank you."

"Sure thing." He repacks the kit and then he's at a loss for what to do next. "Maybe we should get back to the rescue center," he says. It's about a three-hour trek on foot from here to the sloth rescue, but when they came out here two days ago they made the trip in daylight, and there's hardly any of that left now.

Magnus shakes her head. "Don't be ridiculous," she says, and even though she's still pale and sweating a little she sounds determined. "There's no reason to attempt that walk through the jungle at night. I'm certain I'm in no immediate danger." She looks down at her arm and adjusts the bandage, and while she doesn't say anything or change her expression in any significant way, there's a tightness around her mouth and eyes that tells him all he needs to know, that if she _was_ in real danger, they could start back right now and it wouldn't matter because it's a three-hour hike through steep terrain.

"Okay," Will says. "I'll just... go and start packing up as much of our stuff as I can so we can go as soon as the sun's up." Not that they had a lot to pack, but Will needed to do _something_ other than sit and watch Magnus be stubborn. It's a diversion that only lasts a few minutes, and by the time he's done Magnus is attempting to pry the clear plastic cover off a food container one-handed and not having much success. "You should have told me you were hungry."

"I'm not," she says. "But I'd like to get a better look at our friend under the bucket. Perhaps an examination will provide more information."

It's clear what she's trying to do, then, and Will takes over, prying the cover free and sliding it between the bucket and the table so he can turn the bucket over and keep the frog contained. He's not entirely sure what he expected to see, but it wasn't this.

"Dear God," Magnus says.

Will keeps the plastic lid firmly against the bucket, although the frog's in no condition to escape as far as Will can tell. It's brightly colored with orange stripes and blue and black splotches, like a frog he'd seen in a zoo aquarium exhibit once, but roughly half of its small body is covered in the same red, blistering rash as Magnus's arm, and it's just laying there at the bottom of the bucket, twitching a little. "Holy crap."

"Indeed." Magnus leans closer, attempting to get a better look, and Will resists the nearly overwhelming urge to pull her back. "It's a Golfodulcean poison frog," she says, and Will wonders both how in the hell she knows that and why she sound so utterly fascinated when it looks like, to Will, the same rash creeping over her arm is the same one killing Kermit in there.

"I thought you said if it was a poison frog, you'd be... you know, already?"

"I would be, or well on my way to it," she answers. "This species has a rather potent neurotoxin, not always fatal, but it causes seizures and paralysis at the very least. I expect I would be feeling its effects by now."

"But you're not."

"No." She lifts the plastic lid so she can squint at the frog a little more, and Will watches so vigilantly for any sign of movement from the frog that he feels like jumping out of his skin. "There's a theory that poison frogs don't produce their poison on their own, in the manner that snakes produce venom, for example," she says, and replaces the lid. "The idea is that they manufacture their toxins from components of their diet, which explains why captive-bred frogs are only minimally toxic and often rather harmless."

Will thinks he sees where she's going with this, and he's not sure he likes it any better than the alternative. "And it wouldn't be affected by its own toxins, would it?" Because clearly, Kermit here isn't doing so hot.

"No, it would not," she says.

"So if this frog doesn't have its own poison, it's probably captive-bred, and whatever it does have is making him sick--"

"Yes." Magnus doesn't let him spell it out, but he's pretty sure he's on the right track: they're not that far from one of the Hollow Earth calderas, so it's very likely that whatever this frog consumed came from Hollow Earth, and its appearance here was possibly as deliberate as the appearance of that abnormal in Old City that had taken over Abby.

"That's it," Will says. "I'm calling for an evac team."

"It's not necessary," Magnus protests, but Will ignores her. He gets on their one remaining radio and contacts the sloth rescue, who patches them through to Henry back in Old City. He's on it, like he always is, and says he can try to have someone fly up from the Paraguay Sanctuary by morning.

"The Paraguay Sanctuary is in dire need of every hand they can possibly get right now," Magnus says when he's off the radio. "They can't spare the personnel to put together an evacuation team just for me."

Will tries to bite back his temper, but he's not entirely successful. "You know, right now I absolutely do not give a shit whether they can spare the crew or not. We can't get through the jungle tonight, and if what's happening to Kermit there is any clue, you aren't going to feel like going anywhere in a few hours anyway. If you think I'm going to sit here and watch you turn into God-knows-what--"

"Will--"

"No, Magnus. Just no. Don't even try to steamroller over me right now. This is what we're doing."

Maybe he chooses those words on purpose because he's still pissed at her for saying it to him about Abby. Maybe he chooses those words on purpose because he doesn't want her to play the martyr. Maybe he chooses those words on purpose because he's pissed that she thinks he can sit back and watch something happen to her _again_. But whatever the reason he chose them, he didn't choose them to make her flinch the way she does, and his gut twists. "Magnus..."

"Perhaps I deserved that," she says softly, holding her arm to her chest.

Will's never wanted more to hug her than he does right now, to kick down this stupid wall that's built up between them. He misses her. He misses _them_. He wants to apologize and say he's been an ass, but the words choke up in his throat and it doesn't happen. Instead he says, "Why don't you try to get some rest?"

She glances at the bucket with the frog. "I'd like to observe it," she says. "Perhaps there's something I could learn."

"Like what?" he asks. "An estimate of how much time you have left? Because that's all you're gonna get from him." They were equipped for observation and potential bag-and-tag, not for any kind of scientific analysis. It wasn't like she could take blood samples and throw them under a microscope, because they didn't have a microscope. "Whatever this is, you can't fight it if you're exhausted. Get some rest and I'll watch the frog and I'll write down every single thing it does if you really have to know. Swear to God."

Magnus hesitates for a moment, like she's not sure just how stubborn she wants to be, then she nods and turns away to go into the tent. Will waits till she's inside before letting out a deep breath that doesn't do anything to lessen the tension that he feels is going to snap him in two before this is over. Then, since he promised he'd do it, he digs out a notebook and pen and takes notes on what's going on with Kermit in as much detail as possible, but he sits just outside the entrance to the tent while he does it so he can keep an ear out for Magnus in case she needs anything.

It's probably one of the more unpleasant things he's ever done. He can't stand to see anything suffer, even if it's just a frog, and _suffer_ is kind of an inadequate word for what's going on here. If he wasn't convinced before that this isn't something natural, the slow creep of the blistering rash across the frog's body and the sounds it makes--he didn't even _know_ a frog could make sounds like that--are more than enough to convince him. It doesn't help to know that what's happening to the frog is probably going to happen to Magnus. Maybe it'll be slower, and maybe the evac team will get to them before things get too far, but even then they don't even know what this _is_ and the one person on the planet best qualified to figure it out is probably going to be incapacitated before long.

It's a little too much like being trapped with her at the bottom of the ocean for his comfort.

It's fully dark by the time he notices a soft glow coming from inside the tent. He shifts a little so he can pull back the tent flap, and he sees Magnus, lying on her side with her tablet from her pack propped in front of her so she can read it. "You're supposed to be resting," he says.

"I can at least read through the databases I have access to," she says. Her voice is strained in a way he's only heard once before, three thousand feet below sea level. "Try to see if there's anything..." She trails off, skimming through pages and pages of information before she stops and closes her eyes. "How is our guest?"

"Not good." There's no point in lying or trying to put a pretty face on it. Putting down his notebook and pen, he moves into the tent and sits beside her, and when his eyes adjust to the light level and he can see her more clearly, he has to fight down the urge not to freak the fuck out, because the blistered redness has crept past the edges of her bandage, all the way down to her wrist and up to the edge of her short shirtsleeve. "Jesus, Magnus," he says, and she looks away.

"Tell me what I can do," he says after a second. He can't just sit here and do nothing and watch this take her over.

Magnus sucks her lower lip between her teeth and pulls in a breath that takes her some effort. "Could you please remove the bandage?" she asks softly. "Where it touches...it's quite a bit worse. Wear gloves," she adds, even as Will's pulling them from the medical kit.

The bandage isn't tight, just loosely covering the skin, but Magnus winces anyway when he pulls it away as carefully as he can. The rash looks a lot worse on Magnus's pale skin than on the frog's dark splotches, and Will fights the urge to gag. He's never seen anything like this before. He hopes like hell he never does again. He disposes of the bandage in a plastic bag and seals it and when he turns back to Magnus, her eyes are wet.

"Is it bad?" Will asks, and she nods. Just the fact she's actually admitting she's in pain scares the shit out of Will, because she never admits so much as a headache. "Take the morphine," he says.

"I hardly expected you to be an advocate for pharmecutical relief, Will," she replies in a voice that's thin but stubborn as ever.

"Yeah, well," he says, faking casual. "There's a time and place for it. Learned that from you, actually. A couple Tylenol and a power nap aren't gonna cut it this time." Will pulls a syringe from the medical kit. "I won't even give you a full dose," he says, because he knows her objection is that she wants to keep a clear head.

Magnus looks up at him and something heavy twists in his stomach. They've done this dance before, but it feels different this time, and it's a difference that scares him. Finally she looks away and nods, just a tiny shift of her head that is as much permission as he's going to get.

The morphine relaxes her a little, and Will thinks she'll relax a little more if he's not hovering (she hates hovering and he knows it) so he goes back outside to sit by the entrance to the tent. He thinks about making contact with Henry again, to give him an update and ask him if he has a better idea when the Paraguay team's going to get here, but the battery is getting low and Will thinks they might need it later. A quick check on Kermit reveals nothing new except the rash has spread to cover nearly its entire body, and while the frog is still breathing, he's not doing much else. He tries not to think about how this is going to play out with Magnus. He _cannot_ think about how this is going to play out with Magnus, because thinking of that and how goddamn helpless he is to do anything about it makes him want to scream and break things. Sitting still is impossible; he gets up and paces around but he stays very close to the tent, just in case.

Will's not sure how many times he paces back and forth. There's a system: walk around, look at the frog, stick his head in to check on Magnus, walk around some more. At some point Magnus puts down her tablet and seems to fall into a light, restless doze, and Will picks it up to continue reading where she'd left off in the middle of a database of Central American flora. Nothing promising, and he gives up after a little while. There's a strong urge to throw the damn thing into the jungle--it might as well be a frisbee for all the good it does--but Will manages not to do it, though it's a close thing.

It's a whimper from the tent that gets his attention and stops his heart. Will ducks into the tent to see Magnus tugging at her shirt--the redness and the blisters have spread across her shoulders and up her neck. Just the light pressure of her shirt must be causing her excrutiating pain. "Careful," Will says, and pulls on a pair of gloves from the kit so he can help her ease the shirt off. He works carefully so he doesn't touch already inflamed skin, but he doesn't want those parts of her shirt to come into contact with an unaffected area, either. He's pretty sure by now this infection will go even further, but there's no need to spread it around and give it an advantage. Getting rid of the shirt's not enough, though, and she pulls at her bra, trying to fight back tears. The straps are pressing against blistered skin and Will doesn't want to think about how much that must hurt. He tries to give her as much dignity as he can while he helps her take it off, but there's only so much he can do when even covering her with a spare blanket sends her into spasms of pain.

"It's all right," she says, turning away a little. "As long as nothing's touching me, it's bearable."

Will wants to yell at her and tell her to stop being such a goddamn martyr, but he can't. He can't raise his voice to her anymore than he could touch her right now. "Let me give you another dose," he says quietly. It's like he's afraid to even talk to her in a normal voice because he's afraid he'll hurt her. "A full one, this time. Nobody's meant to put up with this much pain for so long, not even you."

When she doesn't even argue with him, he knows they're really in some serious shit. "Just stay with me," she says, once she's taken it.

"I will," he promises. She sits there for a few moments, her eyes growing heavy and the blanket draped loose and low across her chest and stomach, and when she starts to sway he eases her back onto her sleeping bag. Pretty soon, he knows, it'll spread across her back and she won't be able to lie down without pain, and he hopes like hell that doesn't happen before they're rescued. At least for now the drugs are helping her rest and sparing her the worst of the pain. He just hopes it doesn't get worse.

Once he's sure Magnus is as comfortable as he can make her, Will goes to check on Kermit again. It only takes a brief glance to tell Will that the frog is dead and it was probably the messiest and most painful part of the whole ordeal. He moves back inside and sits beside her again and waits.

And waits.

*****

Will's half asleep when he hears her stir. He's stretched out on his own sleeping bag, far enough away that he can't bump her by accident but close enough that he'll know right away if something's wrong. Like now.

"Will," she whispers. Her voice is scratchy and weak, but he wakes immediately. It's like every one of his senses is jammed into high gear.

"Yeah?" he says. "I'm here."

"Thirsty."

"Okay, hang on. Don't move." He finds a canteen and helps her sit up enough that she can drink, but she only wants a little. "Take a little more," he urges, and she shakes her head weakly but he insists. "You need fluids. Doctor's orders, okay?"

That gets a faint smile out of her, and she manages two more small sips before she pulls back again. Half her face is affected now, but for the moment her eyes and mouth are still clear. He doesn't want to think about how painful it will be when it reaches her eyes. The pain of detached retinas will probably seem like a stray eyelash by comparison. "I'm not waiting for that dose to wear off before I give you more," he warns her. He's not going to let her get that far gone.

She nods, but the movement is limited by the spread of the rash. "Will?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't leave."

"I'm not," he says. "I'm staying right here, okay? Don't worry."

"No," she whispers. "Don't leave the Sanctuary."

Will can't breathe. It's like she's knocked the wind out of him and he can't get it back. "Oh, _Magnus_."

She closes her eyes and her breath hitches, then she flinches--the tiny movement's clearly caused her pain. "If I don't make it, I need to know.... to know it's in good hands. Your hands."

He wonders if it's possible to have so many feelings that you just stop feeling anything at all. He thinks if he moves, if he opens his mouth, if he even _breathes_ , then he's going to break. It's every desperate moment of his life piled up into the space of one terrible breath and magnified a million times and he can feel it all right there waiting for him to crack. "Listen to me," he says. "You hang in there, you make it out of here, and I'll stay. You die on me and I'm never setting foot in that Sanctuary again because I won't have a reason to do this anymore." _What is the point of this entire place if we can't save the people that we love?_ "So you fight this, Magnus. _Fight it,_ so we can keep doing this for as long as we can."

She makes a small noise that he can't make out--he doesn't know whether it's a sound of pain or grief or if she's fucking _laughing_ at him, maybe all three--but the corner of her mouth turns up just a little and she nods, a tiny movement that's just enough for him to make out. "So stubborn," she says. It's faint but he can make it out and he shivers with something that he wants to be _hope_ but he can't quite dare to let himself feel yet.

"Damn right," he says. The words bubble up on a wave of emotion he's not sure he can control, but he pushes it back somehow. "So you you have to stay with me."

"I will," she says, and then even more quietly, she adds, "Don't let it get bad again."

He chokes up again as he reaches for another syringe. "I won't," he promises, and he's not just talking about the pain. He's talking about _them_.

Will holds her hand until he hears the rescue helicopter in the distance.

 

*****

It takes Magnus a while to get on her feet again. While Magnus and Will waited for the Paraguay team, Henry and the Big Guy combed the Hollow Earth database for a cure. It's not perfect, and it takes more time than Magnus clearly wants for her to feel herself again--time, and more than one skin graft, and Will thinks if it wasn't for the way she heals differently than the rest of them it might have taken even longer. He keeps things running while she recovers and visits her in the infirmary and wonders if he's doing the right thing.

Magnus finds him one evening in his office. He's so far behind on his paperwork that he doesn't think he'll ever catch up, but he's trying, and he's concentrating on it so much that he doesn't notice she's there until she taps lightly on the doorframe.

"Hey," he says, and comes out around his desk. "I didn't expect to see you up and around yet."

"I'm feeling better," she says. She looks better; maybe a little tired, but her skin is clear and she seems to be moving around without pain and he thinks she's almost to her old self again. Maybe in a few days she'll be the rest of the way there, but it's good progress. "How are you?"

"Swamped," he says, and tosses the folder he's holding onto the stack on his desk with a little shrug. "But it's okay."

Magnus gives him a soft smile and nods. "I wanted to thank you," she says, somewhat hesitantly, "for getting me through that. I wasn't entirely sure..."

"Hey, don't mention it," he says. "We always find a way, don't we?"

"Yes, we do." Her expression softens a little more, almost regretful, and Will feels something tug at him so hard it aches. "Will, I'm aware I implored you to stay and put you in a position where you couldn't easily refuse me, and I apologize for that--and I wanted you to know that while I very much want you to stay, if you still feel that your path should take you elsewhere, then I completely understand."

Here it is, and this time it's for real. This is the point where he can bow out and try to find the normal life he's been looking for all these years--except he finds he doesn't want it anymore. _This_ is his life, and if it took Magnus nearly dying in a Costa Rican rainforest for him to figure it out, then maybe it'll stick this time.

Will shakes his head, slowly. "No," he says, "I'm not leaving. This is where I need to be." It feels _right_ when he says it, and he knows he's doing the right thing even if bits of it don't sit quite right still.

He doesn't expect Magnus's response. She doesn't say anything, but crosses the few steps between them and eases them into a hug. It surprises him, because while they've grown closer and more comfortable with each other through the years, she's only done this once. But this, too, feels right, and he doesn't question it for the brief moment it lasts.

"I'm very glad," she says, and steps back. And when she does, he feels she sees him as something more than just a good soldier.

Everything isn't perfect--some things still aren't quite there--but it's close. So close. And Will's learning that _close_ is sometimes as good as it gets, and maybe he's got it closer than most. The Sanctuary is his family, through the good and the bad, and he can never give that up.

**Author's Note:**

> In music, a passacaglia is a set of variations over a continuous bass line. I saw this, and the episode Fugue, as another variation in Magnus and Will's relationship, over the continuous line of work that is the Sanctuary.


End file.
